by Kim Lawrence
He paused and looked back. It seemed to Beatrice that he was about to say something, but then he appeared to change his mind and carried on walking.
Beatrice didn’t know how long she sat there, shivering and alone, before she returned to her room.
CHAPTER SEVEN
BACK in her suite of rooms, Beatrice showered, standing for a long time under the powerful jets. When she finally stepped out her skin was tingling, but the water hadn’t washed away the disturbing, alien emotions that churned in her belly. Or her guilt.
She was deeply ashamed. It didn’t matter what sort of spin she put on it, her behaviour had been pretty much that of a trollop.
‘The good point,’ she told her pale-faced reflection as she dragged a comb through her wet hair, ‘is that he now thinks you’re exactly the sort of woman he always did. I’m not only an avaricious gold-digger, I’m an avaricious gold-digger with nympho tendencies…’
It couldn’t have worked out better if she’d planned it, Beatrice acknowledged. But the thought did not bring her any glow of sat is faction. She felt so horrified at the thought of what she had been about to do but for the interruption that her stomach muscles twisted.
She had no excuse. It wasn’t as if she was particularly highly sexed, and it wasn’t as if men—some rather nice—hadn’t tried to disprove her own private opinion that she was actually a bit of a cold fish.
She had realised pretty much the moment she’d bought her first bra that there was something about the way she looked that made men assume that she was some sort of smouldering volcano, even when she gave them the cold shoulder.
An image flashed into her head, and her eye lashes brushed against her flushed cheeks as in her mind she saw Tariq’s long brown fingers slide slowly up the pale skin of her thigh. Her eyes glazed as the memory gained ground, reawakening the fever in her blood and the breath less anticipation, causing things deep in her pelvis to tighten and twist…
With a groan, she dropped her head into her hands. The conflict raging inside it made her feel as though it was going to explode. What she needed was a cold shower…another one…and something for her headache.
She took a couple of aspirin and selected a pair of jeans and a white linen shirt from her limited wardrobe—two of the few items she had brought with her that she would normally wear. It seemed wise to tone down her act, because given recent events it seemed she had played it a little too well.
She was sliding her feet into a pair of leather ballet pumps when there was a knock on the door. Tariq walked in before she had a chance to respond. Maybe he thought he had the right? Maybe he thought they were going to take up where they left off?
And who could blame him? Shame rose like bile in Beatrice’s throat. Tariq was only assuming what most men would, given the fact that she hadn’t exactly beaten him off with a stick!
Beatrice struggled to rationalise her recent wanton behaviour. It felt like an erotic dream—though no dream she had ever experienced. Maybe what had happened had been inevitable? A natural consequence in a highly charged atmosphere where feelings were running high and the two people involved were wearing very few clothes? Coupled with the fact that one of those half-naked people had an over powering masculinity, and the other…well, the other, she decided with disgust, was just a push-over! She had acted with no vestige of self-respect, and he had made it clear he had nothing but contempt for her.
Bringing the inner dialogue to an abrupt halt, Beatrice took a deep breath, hooked her thumbs in the belt loops of her jeans, and gave Tariq a cool smile. What mattered was making it clear to him that it wasn’t going to happen again.
‘I’d like you to leave.’
Under the composed smile, Beatrice struggled silently with a fear she was ashamed to ac knowledge before she lifted her chin to a combative angle and forced herself to take a step towards him. Still the fear lingered that if he touched her, if she got close enough to feel the heat of his body, she’d just melt again.
For goodness’ sake, woman, get a backbone and stop acting like you’re a heroine in some Gothic romance. This is the twenty-first century—he’s not about to recruit you for his harem!
‘Now, I don’t want to make a scene.’ Actually, she was pretty sure she could scream blue murder and people around here would turn a deaf ear. ‘But I will.’
Tariq ran a hand across his jaw. ‘There has been an accident,’ he told her bleakly.
As Tariq delivered the news to Beatrice he had to remind himself that it had been no accident that Khalid had been where he was. He had arranged that—arranged his brother’s delayed return—which made him directly responsible.
The last words Khalid had said before they parted rang in his head.
‘Tell Beatrice I’ll be back soon. And, Tariq, leave her alone—she’s really not as…tough as she seems.’
He had given the required promise, lying with no sense of shame. His motivation was pure, or so he had told himself, and the end justified the means.
His brother needed saving from Beatrice Devlin and he’d achieve that—no matter what the sacrifice. And was it such a big sacrifice to engineer a situation that ended with him burying himself deep in her silken softness…?
Khalid’s welfare had certainly not been high on his list of priorities half an hour ago.
‘An accident…?’ Beatrice knew she sounded stupid, but her brain refused to trans late what he was saying.
‘At the irrigation scheme.’
She swallowed. ‘Tell me.’
‘There were injuries.’ The biggest injury was to his moral authority. While he had been making love to the woman his brother loved, Khalid had been lying fighting for his life.
The colour leached from Beatrice’s skin. An image flashed in her head of Emma looking up at Khalid, adoration shining in her eyes… If anything happened to Khalid she wasn’t sure how her friend would cope.
‘Khalid?’
‘He’s been injured. Sit down,’ he said abruptly, because the alternative seemed likely she would fall down.
Nobody, not even an Oscar-winning actress, could have simulated the distress she was displaying. Though she was clearly struggling for composure, she was leaking distress from every perfect pore.
The possibility—and now it seemed a probability—that she had genuine feelings of some sort for his brother was not something that Tariq had even considered to this point. And now he was forced to consider it he resented it.
While he believed Beatrice Devlin an avaricious gold-digger, Tariq had some justification for his machinations. But if she wasn’t, and if his brother was actually the luckiest man alive, then what did that make him?
But Beatrice Devlin’s feelings, or even those of his brother, were not the issue. Neither, he reminded himself grimly, was the ache of thwarted desire in his belly or the fact he felt as guilty as sin.
Beatrice ignored his suggestion to sit down. Not because it wasn’t a good idea, but because everything he said sounded like a decree, and it was genetically coded into her brain to react negatively to orders and authority.
‘He has been taken to the hospital…’
Relief flooded through her. ‘Then he’s alive?’ she breathed, adding a shaky, ‘Thank God!’ Then her knees gave way, and she sank to the chair Tariq pulled up in time to stop her landing in an inelegant heap on the floor.
‘My father is already on his way to the hospital. I must join him there.’
This would be the first time since his stroke that his father, the King, pain fully self-conscious of his slurred speech and too proud to allow his people to see he needed the aid of a stick to walk, had left his private suite.
Khalid’s accident had done what he Tariq had failed to do for the past two years. But Tariq was in no mood to appreciate the silver lining in this situation.
‘But Khalid—he will be all right…?’
‘I will let you know when we have more news.’ Tariq scanned her face and was relieved to see a tinge of col
our in her cheeks. ‘I will have someone come and attend to you.’
‘I don’t need waiting on. I’ve been looking after myself for a long time.’ Beatrice was anxious that he did not judge her normal behaviour on the last few minutes.
‘And now you want my brother to look after you? I can see the attraction of that for a woman who has been forced to live off her own wits.’
The assumption brought a sparkle of annoyance to Beatrice’s green eyes. Knees like jelly, she got to her feet. ‘I suppose you do know your ideas are straight out of the ark? Maybe there are some women who would sacrifice their independence and freedom for security, but not me. I’m not looking for any man to take care of me.’ Beatrice knew that the only person she could rely on was herself.
He looked startled by her forceful pronouncement. ‘Then why marry?’
She responded without thinking. ‘Marriage has never been part of my plan…’ ‘Plan’ was actually too definite a term, but Beatrice had never pictured herself meeting anyone she would contemplate spending the rest of her life with. ‘I’m not into compromise.’ And it often seemed to her that that was what marriage was all about.
‘Then you met Khalid?’
She flushed self-consciously and silently cursed her runaway tongue. ‘Then I met Khalid,’ she agreed, as her lashes swept down in a concealing curtain.
‘I will keep you informed of his condition.’
‘You’re not leaving me here!’ she ex claimed. ‘I’m coming with you.’
He spun back, looking startled by the comment.
‘That is quite in appropriate.’
Beatrice stuck out her chin in response to the frigid dismissal, but her belligerence was superficial. It was just dawning on her that, whether she liked it or not, Tariq’s word was pretty much law around here, and if he chose not to allow her access to Khalid there was not a damn thing she could do about it.
Actually, if Tariq chose to put her on the first plane home there wasn’t a damn thing she could do about it!
It was a pity she couldn’t use the same excuse for her shameful response to his love making.
Banishing the stream of erotic images that flickered across her mind, she struggled to keep the cool smile in place. ‘I really don’t give a damn for appropriate. I’m not about to sit here twiddling my thumbs, waiting for you to remember I exist.’
An expression she couldn’t quite pin down flickered across his lean features. ‘I will not forget you exist.’
He didn’t tack on unfortunately, but it was clearly what he was thinking. Quite irrationally, Beatrice felt a stab of hurt.
‘Khalid is hurt and I want to be there.’ She had to be there—for Emma. Depending on what she found at the hospital, she would have to make a judgement whether to inform Emma right away or wait until Khalid was better…if Khalid got better…
Beatrice felt panic crowding in on her from all sides, robbing her of the ability to think clearly. Eyes squeezed tightly shut, she fought her way past the knot of dread like a cold stone in her belly.
She sucked in a deep, steadying breath. There was no point assuming the worst. Until she knew otherwise she would work on the assumption that Khalid would be fine.
She dragged an unsteady hand through her hair, tangling her fingers in the damp curls. Her eyes drifted open and she became belatedly aware that Tariq was staring at her, his expression inscrutable.
Their eyes connected, and Beatrice let her hand fall to her side.
She took a deep breath. There was a time, she decided, for pride—and this was not it. He was not a man who responded to demands and ultimatums, but maybe a little genuine grovelling would work.
CHAPTER EIGHT
‘PLEASE?’ The word emerged huskily as she spread her hands in a pacific gesture.
A muscle clenched in his lean cheek and she saw something flicker in the back of his obsidian eyes.
Hoping it indicated a softening of his attitude, she added, ‘I need to come. I need to be there.’
For a moment she thought he was going to dismiss her request out of hand, and then, with a slight shrug of his shoulders, he inclined his dark head. She followed him, and to her utter relief Tariq didn’t object.
He strode down the corridor, leading the way through a door hidden by a heavy curtain. Behind it was a spiral stair case that led directly onto one of the inner court yards.
As they stepped out of the big double doors two body guards fell wordlessly into step behind them. Beatrice’s thoughts were too occupied else where to consider the strangeness of spending your life constantly being shadowed by men who were willing to give their own life for you. A brief sideways glance at Tariq’s profile suggested he was similarly preoccupied.
The helicopter was waiting for them, and the moment they were on board it took off.
‘How long will it take?’
‘We will be at the hospital in five minutes,’ he said, without lifting his eyes from the hand-held computer he held. He clearly did not wish to make conversation, but Beatrice couldn’t keep quiet.
‘Did they say anything about…?’
He turned his head, moved his glance from her clenched hands to her tense face. ‘They said nothing more than I have already told you,’ he lied—not out of compassion, or a desire to protect her from the truth, he told himself, but because he did not want to cope with any hysterical out bursts.
When he’d last spoken to the hospital his brother was being transferred to surgery. Speed, they had explained, in such a situation was paramount, in order to avoid any possible permanent brain damage.
Beatrice’s fingers continued to restlessly tap the rhythm to a nameless tune that she couldn’t get out of her head. ‘How can you work at a time like this?’ She envied him his monumental calm. ‘He’s your brother.’
Tariq, who had been staring at a blank screen, lifted his head. The expression she glimpsed briefly in his deepset eyes made it clear that his detachment was an illusion. ‘Would you like me to rant and tear at my hair to prove I care?’ he wondered conversationally.
Beatrice gave a self-reproachful grimace. ‘Sorry. That was unfair.’
‘And you are usually always scrupulously fair?’ he mocked.
‘I try to be, and I know you care,’ she conceded. ‘In your own way…’
He laid aside the computer. ‘What is my way?’ She hesitated and he said, ‘Feel free to speak your mind.’
‘An over-protective, manipulative, control-freak way.’ She saw the shock register on his face and thought, Oh, he didn’t mean that free. ‘I talk too much when I’m nervous.’
His mouth twisted into a sardonic smile. ‘This I had noticed.’
Seeing the smile, Beatrice was relieved he hadn’t taken offence. Given how reliant she was on his goodwill, there seemed little point going out of her way to aggravate him. ‘You did say speak my mind,’ she reminded him, shifting restlessly in her seat. ‘I keep thinking if only…’
‘If only what?’
‘I know this isn’t my fault.’ Logically at least this was true.
Tariq tensed. Did she think he needed reminding that it was his fault? Did she think he wasn’t aware that he had sent his brother into danger?
‘If I hadn’t come here it wouldn’t have happened.’ If I hadn’t interfered and meddled because I always think I know what was best. ‘Khalid would not be lying in a hospital bed.’
‘No, he’d be lying in your bed.’ His glance drifted over her face, lingering on her inviting lips. It is where any man would want to be, he thought.
It is where I want to be.
Embarrassed, Beatrice looked away. The only man she had ever wanted to share a bed with was sitting a few feet away. The knowledge scared her witless.
What is happening to me?
‘Only if he had the energy to negotiate three miles of corridors.’
‘True love always finds a way.’
The harshness in his voice made Beatrice turn her head sharply to look at him
.
‘You really do care for Khalid, don’t you?’
She responded to the abrupt question without thinking. ‘Yes, of course.’
‘And you see no conflict in professing to love a man and sleeping with his brother?’
‘I didn’t…’ Blushing to the roots of her hair, she threw a mortified glance over her shoulder, in the direction of the stony-faced guards. Her voice dropped to an agonised whisper as she added, ‘We didn’t…’
‘Technically speaking,’ he inserted sardonically.
‘And that was sex, not love. I don’t even like you!’
‘You flaunt your body, yet you blush like a virgin when I mention sex.’
‘I’m a mass of contradictions. It’s part of my irresistible attraction.’ She felt the helicopter drop and gave a sigh of relief. ‘We’re here.’
‘You lied,’ she accused in a quivering voice when the door closed behind the doctor.
He shrugged, and didn’t look disturbed at the accusation. ‘If I had told you the truth and said that Khalid needed surgery to relieve pressure on his brain would it have made you feel better?’
‘This isn’t about making me feel better,’ she retorted, struggling to contain her temper. ‘It’s about you deciding in a patronizing, paternalist way what I should know.’ She dashed a tear from her cheek as the hypocrisy of her accusation struck her.
Didn’t postponing telling Emma about the accident make her guilty of the same thing?
She chewed her lip, agonising over her decision. Was she doing the right thing, waiting?
‘Here.’
She stared blankly at the handkerchief he held out to her, then took it and blew her nose noisily.
‘Thank you,’ she sniffed, adding, ‘You really are the most unbelievably arrogant man.’ And the most beautiful, she thought, her glance drifting to the sensual outline of his mouth. She looked away as her body temperature rose in response to an intense hormonal rush.
‘It is part of my irresistible charm.’
Beatrice didn’t respond to the teasing reminder of her earlier remark. His irresistibility was no joking matter to her. It was a shameful distraction!